Planes, trains, and automobiles
Planes versus trains: 1) Before you board a plane as a passenger, you must go through a long, tedious, vaguely insulting process with the TSA. It's security theater which probably doesn't stop any terrorists. Nonetheless, you must get to the airport 90 to 120 minutes before the flight takes off, and that's mostly due to the potential for delays during security screening. After that, you're kept in a sort of security bubble, including the umbilicus from the airport to the plane itself... all to avoid letting suspicious people near the plane. Before boarding a train, you must do none of this. You can walk into the train station 15 minutes before departure. This is a huge time savings. Advantage: trains. 2) Boarding a plane is terribly inefficient. Being a narrow tube with a narrow one-person walkway and (usually) only one entrance at the front, you end up forced into a single line of people. The whole line stops when the guy or gal at the front reaches their row, and has ...